Roger Launius

> public was actually never in favor of the Apollo program except for when we actually landed on the moon Wow, I wasn't aware that the "only point at which the opinion surveys demonstrate that more than 50 percent of the public believed Apollo was worth its expense came in 1969 at the time of the Apollo 11 lunar landing" [1]. [1] https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2010/08/16/exploding-the-myth-of-popula…

Yes sorry, FAA. I’m a Brit so not as familiar with the US institutions. My point is there is extensive and persistent oversight, debate and opportunities for input and objection. Journalists play a role in the public interest in any democratic society. One person didn’t ask whether we should? Space technology has been controversial since its inception. Citizens, journalists and politicians have been questioning it throughout its history. You really honestly think you’re the first person, or this is the first time anyone has stopped to wonder about it? Incidentally, there’s one particularly famous example of this from 1970 that’s a bit of a classic: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… Of course nobody should get a free pass to wreck the Earth. That’s a cartoonishly absurd caricature of what’s going on.

Here's a classic letter by Ernst Stuhlinger to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration: "Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa" - https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

> Here - https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-... - some arguments for space exploration in general. I don't think anyone is against using space, but that's quite a different thing from human space exploration. The only specific example he gives of the direct use for space - using artificial satellites - don't require human space exploration. Neither do the more indirect benefits he mentions - international cooperation and having high level challenges. There are plenty of high challenges (even if we just look at space), many that would also have much more tangible benefits in addition to being a high level challenge. Talking about our natural curiosity isn't a great reason either - we're already doing much more robotic exploration of space than most cultures historically did of their surroundings. And this exploration doesn't necessitate humans.

The initiative reminds me of this: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… The modern web made possible to represent knowledge in completely new forms and to easily collaborate with people in your fields of interest. From your home you can now find a 3D animation of how some piece of engineering or science works. With AR and VR you can comprehend complex concepts faster. The barriers to enter science and contribute to solving big civilization issues are lower than ever. The parts are already in place. What I'd love to see is how to teach and organize people to use the existing web more efficiently.

Hi highly recommend anyone to read Ernst Stuhlinger's (former NASA administrator) letter to a nun in Africa : https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

Let's say we poll the roughly 1b people living in first world, and ask them each to pay $10 to see SpaceX do whatever SpaceX does. How many people even think it's worth $10? I just wan't to add that the problem is not that SpaceX provides less to humanity than WhatsApp. The problem is that most people are not really far-sighted, but only see things which benefit themselves in a predictable amount of time. Why companies like SpaceX (or NASA) are important has already been answered with Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563

i think a good counter to this sort of argument is : https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

The money is not "burned up" - it is spent right here on Earth. It's paid to extremely skilled engineers, technicians and scientists. The technology developed for doing such a difficult task will inevitably benefit all of humanity. It did so for Apollo. It will again in the future. https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

I think you should read this: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… I had similar views until 5 years ago and questioned almost every new investment/endeavour by people that required significant upfront capital investment but I think this letter has changed a lot of my thinking process.

https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… in general, there's a lot of items on the urgent list, there's so much money to go around and you don't want to invest everything in endeavour X only for Y to be worse and catch you by surprise. so you allocate some budget to secondary research as well. NASA doesn't even burn that much in the grand scheme of things.

> A lot of the justification for human space exploration seems to be circular and rest entirely on the quasi-religious belief that sending people into space is inherently good. It's just a short summary of the reasoning. Here - https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… - some arguments for space exploration in general. Human exploration in particular becomes more clear when one realizes that modern robotics can't fit a lot of exploration requirements as well as humans can. Aside from commercial goals - like resources, tourism, support of space equipment - we have natural, if strategic, curiosity of environment around us. We're just at the point when that "around" starts getting bigger than the planet.

1) https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let… 2) the diarrheal diseases generally don't need much money at all. 16oz water, fist of salt, three finger pinch of sugar. Unfortunately, the adults in charge of those children tend to remain ignorant even after the Western doctors tell them about the cure. So money won't do anything for that. You can't force a Madagascan to stop dancing with family corpses, ya know.

There are always some naysayers. There were some for the US program too: https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

hear, hear https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

Ernst Stuhlinger wrote this letter on May 6, 1970, to Sister Mary Jucunda, a nun who worked among the starving children of Kabwe, Zambia, in Africa, who questioned the value of space exploration. At the time Dr. Stuhlinger was Associate Director for Science at the Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama. https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-let…

There are other benefits too. http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-lett…

Thanks JD. Good coverage on Mangalyan. For many Indians who are criticizing this Mission saying that the money would be better spent on toilets or teachers, this is an eye opener: Why Explore space http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-lett…

You might find this article interesting - "Why Explore Space? A 1970 Letter to a Nun in Africa." [1] (HN discussion [2]). [1] http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-lett… [2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563

For those wondering why India doesn't first feed its citizens, here is a relevant post: http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-lett…

Anyone who thinks India doesn't need a Mars mission, please raise your hands up. Done, good. Now you've given your opinion. Please sit down and shut the F up. Whatever I write would pail in comparison to a thread posted a few days earlier: Link: http://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/02/08/why-explore-space-a-1970-lett… HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4372563

The space shuttle was funded and designed to meet Department of Defense specifications. Its cargo bay designed to ferry satellites up and to potentially return them back to earth. https://www.space.com/34522-secret-shuttle-missions.html https://launiusr.wordpress.com/2012/11/12/nasas-space-shuttle-and-the-… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Department_of_Defense_Space_Shu… The Hubble design was remarkably close to Keyhole: https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/3448/was-hubble-really-relat… Keyhole satellites were seriously cool. Photos were taken on film, and the film reels were jettisoned over the ocean. C-130 transports would capture the payloads as they parachuted back to earth: https://www.cnn.com/2016/09/01/us/declassified-spy-satellite-hexagon/i…